Well, in Denmark all education may be free, however if you get in anywhere above compulsory, they will not hesitate to kick you out, if you do not perform.
The government will even give you an almost adequate living stipend, however the payment of it is contingent on you progressing normally through your study.
The figure is damming, as Denmark can get as good results in longevity for half the money of what the US can. I would not like that one bit if i were american.
ROFL. It’s impossible to deal with this kind of right-wing fascist ideological blindness. Especially when it is conjoined with confusion like this:
However do you think the income and wealth gap came about, Gman? It comes from redistribution by the government, in favor of a tiny elite both by taxes and by economic structures. There is only way to rebalance things and that is to tax wealth and income at the highest levels (it is pure bullshit to say the wealthiest pay the bulk of taxes – some types of Federal income taxes perhaps, but certainly not the other, highly regressive taxes at the state and local level, as well as payroll taxes, for which roughly 3/4s of American households pay more than they do income taxes. Then there are investment taxes. Note also that the wealthy are much better at hiding income than the middle and lower classes). It also comes from the economic structures that underpin society, notably, corporations, also creations of governments, created during the great early wave of western colonialism to carry out colonial projects on behalf of the crown. In exchange for taking on economic projects of great risk, the owners were freed from liability, but had to return a large chunk of profits to the crown. Corporations have failed to do that latter, though they have retained and expanded the former. They retain their old function, however, of stripping the periphery of profit and returning it to the center (now the great financial centers). Thus your first paragraph could be anywhere within shouting distance of making sense in a society where economic structures did not favor anyone, but that is not the case in the US or in any other modern society. Economic structures definitely favor tiny elites in many ways. Hence your claims above are absurd.
Now, I’m happily radical and hold the very conservative position that corporations ought to be banned and all wealth returned to the people who actually generate it, business owners and workers (as opposed to holders of capital, few of whom do anything truly productive in any meaningful sense). That’s a sturdily pro-business view, because I see no reason why large sectors of the market should be hived off from its offered efficiencies inside the command economies we call corporations.
Of course it does. If you grant an entity sovereign powers, be it a god or the state, it only has one posture: meddling. If a factory is upstream from a pig farm, a house, and oyster traps at the river mouth, and it dumps toxins into the stream, then the government is meddling whether it forces the factory to do anything or not. If it chooses to let the factory dump, then it is meddling on behalf of the factory. Soon other factory owners will notice, and since one key desire of business is to externalize costs and internalize profits, they will move to the area, chasing out the houses and the oyster farmers. If the government stops the factory from dumping waste, it meddles on behalf of the other users of the river water. There is no decision that the government can make that is not “meddling,” because of the problem of externalities. In the real world business always seeks to externalize costs and internalize profits. Each time that occurs, governments must make decisions.
Government can’t just “enforce the rules of the game” because there are neither rules nor game. The real world is full of complex policy issues that require the government to make decisions, not simpleminded right-wing market nonsense. In the case of the river above, the government also has to make a decision about how to plan water distribution for the whole basin, about how factory wastes affect nations downstream, about long term environmental effects like global warming and ocean acidification. The market can’t do that, it is always focused on the short term and on externalization of costs.
Well maybe that’s the answer. Forget the budget what the US needs is to be invaded and occupied by Denmark.[/quote]
You guys forgot to include an adjustment for per capital income. sigh. US has higher per capita income which means that it spends less, relatively, than Denmark. And you used the wrong figures. Denmark’s own numbers have them outspending the US though not by much (which means it spends much more, relatively, than the US).
Well maybe that’s the answer. Forget the budget what the US needs is to be invaded and occupied by Denmark.[/quote]
You guys forgot to include an adjustment for per capital income. sigh. US has higher per capita income which means that it spends less, relatively, than Denmark. And you used the wrong figures. Denmark’s own numbers have them outspending the US though not by much (which means it spends much more, relatively, than the US).
The real US spending advantage is in college, and the differences in educational systems mean that it is difficult to compare the two systems.[/quote]
The point really wasn’t to compare Denmark and the US the point was to look at US spending relative to other nations. Regardless I don’t think you can say that any problems with the US educational system are a result of lack of funds.
However do you think the income and wealth gap came about, Gman? It comes from redistribution by the government, in favor of a tiny elite both by taxes and by economic structures… [/quote]
Let’s just assume I agree with everything you said. How do you implement your budget in the current political system?
Being no fan of corporations I’m not really opposed to the idea of banning them. However I’d like clarification on how you define holders of capital. When I think about capital I think interms of accumulated savings so I’m not sure who you mean by ‘holders of capital’
[quote]
Of course it does. If you grant an entity sovereign powers, be it a god or the state, it only has one posture: meddling. If a factory is upstream from a pig farm, a house, and oyster traps at the river mouth, and it dumps toxins into the stream, then the government is meddling whether it forces the factory to do anything or not. If it chooses to let the factory dump, then it is meddling on behalf of the factory. Soon other factory owners will notice, and since one key desire of business is to externalize costs and internalize profits, they will move to the area, chasing out the houses and the oyster farmers. If the government stops the factory from dumping waste, it meddles on behalf of the other users of the river water. There is no decision that the government can make that is not “meddling,” because of the problem of externalities. In the real world business always seeks to externalize costs and internalize profits. Each time that occurs, governments must make decisions.
Government can’t just “enforce the rules of the game” because there are neither rules nor game. The real world is full of complex policy issues that require the government to make decisions, not simpleminded right-wing market nonsense. In the case of the river above, the government also has to make a decision about how to plan water distribution for the whole basin, about how factory wastes affect nations downstream, about long term environmental effects like global warming and ocean acidification. The market can’t do that, it is always focused on the short term and on externalization of costs.
Vorkosigan[/quote]
I don’t consider your example meddling. The considerations you mention are exactly what the government is supposed to do. They are supposed to step in and make decisions in cases where the freemarkets are not ideally suited for dealing with to protect the interests of society. The question is at what point do governments over reach? Should the government favour one industry over another? Or even within an industry one company over another? Why should the government be in the business of protecting individauls or organisations from the consequences of their choices? It’s not about doing away with government. It is defining the role of government and limiting it’s powers to confine it to that role.
As I’ve said, pass your budget tomorrow with the government the US has in place now and in very short order it’ll result in even more misery for the very people it’s is supposed to benifit.
The issue for me as a teacher has never been about funding. What are the major expenditures for schools? Probably capital works and salaries. In the case of the former, having or not having state of the art classrooms fitted out with all of the latest computer gadgetry (which I’ve seen in government schools, by the way, though it’s usually been vandalised) or an enormous gym or some such thing was never an issue. Likewise, in terms of salaries, if viewed per student, you’re basically looking at student to teacher ratios. Again, the issue for me was never whether I had 22 or 25 kids in my class or that I wasn’t getting paid enough.
The issue for me was always whether I had kids who turned up to class on time with the correct materials and didn’t fuck around and fuck it up for me and the other students. No one is really, truly willing to address this underlying cultural issue with how education is regarded in many English speaking countries – that we pander to the lowest common denominator, who has the “right” to fuck everyone else over, but never any responsibilities. Thus, they put up this smoke screen of funding. You could build the Taj Mahal for a class of only four or five kids if you really wanted, but if 20-25% of them are hardcore little cunts (as was my experience in both Australia and the U.K.), then that really doesn’t matter a damned bit. Frankly, you’d have to pay me probably double what I was earning (in other words, an unrealistic figure) to go back to teaching many of the kids I taught.
Since everyone is proposing radical solutions, here’s my radical solution: bring back chimneys so we can put the little fuckers up those and kill them off when they’re young and leave everyone else who wants to teach and learn to teach and learn. Fuck 'em. I’m sick of society being held hostage by its dregs. It’s a very large reason for why I don’t live in the West anymore.
Nothing will make a person a misanthrope faster than the sheer, unadulterated barbarism of a modern classroom.
This is exactly what i have been saying for years.
My kid went to Taiwan schools from kindergarten through the 8th grade, and then we put him into one of the American schools for a repeat of the 8th grade and the 9th grade before sending him to live with my folks in Pittsburgh to attend the same public high school from which I graduated.
When the boy was in grade school, we sent him to live with my folks in the summers so that he could visit family and improve his English. My sister’s kid, a year ahead of my boy, is something of a genius and was always in super advanced classes in this same school district. One summer, the school district was auditioning prospective new teachers and had invited several of these super advanced kids to come in to be the students for the demonstration lessons taught by the prospective new teachers. My sister’s girl asked if she could take my boy in with her and the school allowed this. The teachers called on several of the students during their demos and when they finally called on my boy, he stood up next to his desk, as if at attention, and addressed the teachers. My sister’s girl was embarrassed and told him to sit down. But, the school superintendant told me that she was quite impressed and half-jokingly expressed a desire that all students would show some of that respect.
My boy is now completing his senior year of high school on Pittsburgh. He’s at the same school I went to. Its an average public school in Pennsylvania. Not among the best, and not among the worst. We speak nearly every day by Skype and over the past three years he has described the way that many students disrupt classes. From kids who simply will not stop talking to those who question every direction given by the teachers, to those who simply are not interested in learning anything. And these are not the really aggressively disruptive, who would normally have been weeded out by this time. These are just kids who will go on to graduate, but, who will have virtually wasted their time, and the time of many others, while in school.
Now, I would never advocate that students should stand at attention to address a teacher. I would have rebelled at that. But, there has to be some area more appropriate for students and teachers somewhere between students standing at attention and students showing open disrespect and or complete apathy. I think it would have been difficult for me to learn had I been required to stand at attention (because that type of environment would have made me rebel), but, I think it must be equally difficult for teachers to teach when so many students simply don’t care. Too many students have a too cool for school attitude. Add parents who don’t care either, or who cannot imagine their kids ever being at fault or deserving of a poor mark, and you have a situation that money cannot, IMO, fix.
So, I’m interested in reading comments that explain how throwing more money at education will result in any changes for the better.
It’ll also help people with reading comprehension!
If that’s a poke at me, its a poke in error. I’m not concerned with whether Obomber was born inside or outside of the USA.[/quote]
Shows how brainwashed you are.
Dr. McCoy: Honestly, I don’t think the issue is Birthers vs non-Birthers. I’ve met my fair share of people who supposedly tick all the right boxes in terms of what an intelligent liberal should be. Believe in evolution? Check. Believe in global warming? Check. All of that stuff. It’s not even as though they really believe in it. They simply accept it acritically as Truth. If you actually begin to question them for a second about any topic, be it science or history or anything else, they don’t know jack. This is because they run with the crowd not because they know why they’re running, but because everyone else is running. The world for them exists either in what they can see and touch right here, right now, and what they have directly experienced in their lives, or it exists in a kind of mythological, fantasy sense of these vague stories about a time long before passed down by their elders. They might as well be New Guineans who believe that inside a television is a little man making pictures and sounds because they actually have damned near no understanding of the world (outside whatever they do for a living) beyond that of a stone age hunter gather.
Tigerman: Indeed. I watched a kid bow to his teacher today and I felt a little unsettled by it, but there is still some modicum of respect here and it’s kind of sweet. Despite how much I rant about teaching here, my worst students are not too bad at all, and many of my students are actually really nice to be around. I could say that about very few classes I encountered in the West. When kids act out here, it’s almost never malicious, and I’m yet to feel threatened by a student.
Some people think it should be possible to live without conflict, but at a minimum, where two living beings’ spheres of influence touch, there will be conflicts of interest. So, there is a need for arbitrators, and as imperfect as they may be, having them is in most cases still better than not having them. And arbitrators will, of course, have to “meddle” in order to be effective…
“Voerts off visdom”, as a German guy i knew used to say…
